Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday December 18, 2010 @09:20AM
from the hello-complaints-department dept.

Chaonici writes "The first actual bank to do so, Bank of America has decided that it will follow in the footsteps of PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa, and halt all its transactions that it believes are intended for WikiLeaks, including donations in support of the organization. 'This decision,' says the bank, 'is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.' Coincidentally, in a 2009 interview with Forbes magazine, Julian Assange stated that he was in possession of the hard drive of a Bank of America executive, and that he planned to release information about a major bank early next year."

Having a hard drive of a B of A executive is hardly conclusive as to the banks safety. As far as we know, the contents might have been removed, etc - and it was sent in for repair.

Safety? Wikileaks isn't going to be releasing Bank of America's passwords or security information. If they release anything it's going to be about corruption, insider dealing, complicity in illegal activities etc. The concern isn't the bank's "safety" per se. It's that if shit falls on Bank of America, their share price will get hit, there might be legal investigations into wrong-doing... That sort of thing. And I don't know what sort of shape Bank of America is in - are they part of the general morass that US banking has sunk into over the last couple of years? If so, probably the last thing they need right now is investors getting out. A run on the bank by the public? That's not a first response to this. It's this hit on share price and investors that would be the immediate effect. Expect some emergency buying by non-neutral parties to keep share price up if Wikileaks comes out with anything juicy.

When I bought a house, with an FHA loan, I was informed that the loans are only "temporarily" run through FHA and that it'd be sold to a bank within 3 months.

When I found out BofA bought my home loan, I cringed. They're nothing but assholes, the crap I went through when they bought out MBNA and acquired my main credit card was unbelievable.

They recently started fucking around with the interest rates (fortunately the one on the house payment is fixed!) on cards, and they tried to stick an $80 "security" monthly payment to my escrow when, the month after paying yearly property tax, the escrow went a few cents under $50.

Heard that yesterday, sounds like Goddard's swan song on his way out the door. Will be good for his next office election and maybe state coffers.

This decision,' says the bank, 'is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.'

Too bad Wikileaks is not an international drug running [bloomberg.com] or firearms smuggling [pbs.org] organization, they appear to be more befitting "internal policies".

You'll notice that the US Government didn't really do *too* much to Assange after his prior leaks. Hell, he already leaked before and they didn't "shut 'em down". On the other hand, they shut the hell out of dozens of domains that pirates trademarked purses and stuff last month. If they can do that, why can't they do the same for something that supposedly "puts national security and lives at risk"? Right, because it doesn't and it didn't.

However, THIS time, he warns that he has pretty dire information about financial institutions and THEN shit suddenly hits the fan. The clear point here being that it's the FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS that are putting the screws to him.

Suing a bank over something only they have records for? Good luck! Especially in the US where your chance to get your right mostly depends on how deep your pockets are. And you're standing against someone whose pockets are residing in the Grand Canyon.

The other half of the story is this... The banks gave out loans that they knew had very little chance of ever being repaid and then sold those bad loans off to the unwary as fast as they could. Legal does not equal ethical. Remember that, and you'll know why people are so pissed at the banks. If they were in it to make an ethical buck, then they could have still made those loans, kept the risk, then re-mortgaged people who were in trouble at more favorable (to the borrower), but less profitable terms (for the owner of the loan), which would have still made the banks (less) money AND kept people in their homes. Instead, the banks chose to foreclose, as that way they could charge the people they sold the bad loans to for administering the foreclosure, not have to worry about losing the principle or interest on the loans, and leaving borrowers bankrupt and homeless. Sure, the people who took those loans shouldn't have, but if only one party, ie the banks, had done the right thing at any step of the way, everyone could have still come out of this without it having been half as bad as it's been.

Even if the bank succeed in assassinating Julian Assange, WikiLeaks will release the documents to their mainstream press partners.

(Think about it. if he, as the public face of WikiLeaks, causes only a 1% drop in stock valuation, that's still billions of dollars out of the pocket of the banking community. The man's dead. He'll be a martyr, but a very dead one.[The "rape trial" is obviously an attempt at character assassination. Rape as a crime is NEVER pursued so much as to cause extradition. Once the leak is done with, the charge will be done with...{Julian Assange may be a prick and an egotistical asshole. For all I know he may even be guilty. Rape charges DON'T happen like that unless somebody with "mui dinero" is calling the shots.(Think of what YOU could expect if your sister was the victim. Do you see the cops from the local precinct running to another country to capture somebody. Its not even a murder. That's what I'm saying.)}])

Now the question is how scared are these partners.

Do the Guardian, the New York Times and half a dozen other still retain enough editorial integrity not to knuckle under from the shit storm of advertising the banks are going to unleash defending their fictional record and fighting the truth of how nefarious, perfidious, greedy, grasping, manipulative, wanton crazed, depraved and devoid of human sensibility, their actions are.

And I don't know what sort of shape Bank of America is in - are they part of the general morass that US banking has sunk into over the last couple of years?

They need to die. They're incompetent AND fraudulent. Unfortunately for me they bought my mortgage back in June (something I'm still cranky with TD Bank about). I just got called by them again last night (by a robot) claiming my mortgage is past due. Problem? I paid the mortgage over a week early. But they can't handle that. This is the fifth month in a

Assange / Wikileaks doesn't do business with Bank of America, and likely never has.

Bank of America did not close a bank account (like the swiss postbank) or terminated a payment processing contract (like Paypal, Visa and Mastercard), it stops transferring money to other banks. So anybody with a Bank of America account is no longer allowed to transfer his money to another bank account without "moral approval" of the BoA.

1. they receive some kind of common carrier status, which means they will have to accept everyone as a customer and have to process everyone's transactions.

2. they can have the freedom to do business with whomever they like and maintain blacklists of payments they will not process, but that means they will become accomplishes if the transfer is part of some crime.

The only possible exception would be specific government regulation.(assuming an uncorrupted government off course, in that case all bets are of)

Yes, this is total crap. Just more evidence that the banking system is more corrupt than anyone ever imagined. I mean Visa and MasterCard were content to deal with the Canadian Pharmacy operation for a DECADE and now suddenly the financial institutions are ganging up on WikiLeaks of all things?

Remember guys. If you want to do something about this, your best bet is to support BitCoin [bitcoin.org], a peer to peer currency with a small but rapidly growing economy. A BitCoin is worth roughly 25 cents on the exchanges. The production BitCoin network needs your CPU or GPU time to grow stronger, so mosey on over and grab the distribution. It's MIT/X11 licensed.

While I've taken a personal stance that sending money to Wikileaks via Bitcoin is a good thing, most of the people on the Bitcoin forums are against the idea and the lead developer wants to stay away from Wikileaks as long as he can. It is already causing grief for the Wikimedia Foundation, especially as Jimmy Wales ended up buying the domains for Wikileaks through a comedy of errors (via Wikia).

The nail in the coffin on the idea of using Bitcoin to send money to Wikileaks is that the Wikileaks guys don't want it either. If you set up an address for Wikileaks, they won't even take the bitcoins. I think they are foolish to do that, but that is their prerogative and not something you can force upon a group like this. Their main complaint is that they can't get the money out to pay their bills... something that is of a concern. You can easily exchange Bitcoins for Liberty Reserve Dollars, but getting your money out from LR Dollars isn't easy either and that seems to be the main sticking point.

Bitcoins certainly isn't ready to process tens of thousands of dollars in daily throughput to and from federal reserve notes... at least yet. There are some volunteers and interested parties trying to get that going, but it isn't there yet, and you certainly can't buy bitcoins with PayPal or a credit card at the moment unless you personally know somebody with a stack of bitcoins willing to sell them in a direct exchange.

About the only thing bitcoins are good for at the moment is to trade Dollars for Russian Rubles and the other way around. It works pretty good that way and I got at least a couple of Rubles via Bitcoin. You can also indirectly trade both currencies for Japanese Yen, although that market is still quite slow as there aren't many in Japan trading bitcoins at the moment. Somebody selling pounds might be a potential market that currently isn't being met either.

Ah right, sorry, I didn't mean "use BitCoin to send Wikileaks money". I meant to support it as a general statement against the existing banking system, the problems of which the Wikileaks fiasco happens to have clearly exposed but would have been problematic anyway.

BTW, I happen to agree and think that supporting Bitcoin is going to be one way to end the cartel control over the world's banking system. Bitcoins are certainly going to be something significant to start using if Dollars and Euros start to go hyperinflationary on us.

I happen to think that is a very real possibility, and there is a whole bunch of reasons to start to worry about the next major crash that is going to slam world curencies: naked shorting on precious metal contracts. I've read stories about

Systems like BitCoin will become illegal because they allow transferring of money outside of government control. Most governments today are too corrupt to allow citizens free reign with their funds. The excuses are legion: tax evasion, Wars On Everything, money proceeds from general crime etc. So instead of trying to figure out ways to create a taxation system that works and is financially viable (which of course would mean 80-90% reduction in size of most governments), stopping ridiculous religiously-motiv

It does need to be a lesson to every organization though. Wikileaks / Assange will turn on you any second that they think they have something that they can use to feed their ego. You're not safe doing business with this guy

In order:
1. It's not a lesson to every organization. It's only a warning to ones that have been engaged in wrong-doing.
2. "Wikileaks / Assange" is not good terminology: Wikileaks is not synonymous with Julian Assange and the constant identification of the two with each other is a symptom of our media which simplifies everything to Hollywood plot-lines. We shouldn't perpetuate this.
3. Wikileaks has not "turned on" anyone because this has strong connotations of betrayal. When were Wikileaks and Bank of America ever partners in anything?
4. Why this business of "feeding the ego"? It seems a cheap way to try and invalidate an action by alleging a base motive to the person doing the action. If someone wants to "feed their ego", they're better off trolling innocents on Slashdot or getting a job in Airport security where they can boss people around, than taking on the US government. As a member of the public, I have an interest in knowing about wrong-doings committed by world governments or large corporations.

On a side note, I'm going to go hide that childhood picture of me dressed as a girl for halloween... I'd hate to see it end up on Wikileaks after the cleaning lady steals it.

Wikileaks isn't for people's personal foibles - it's about malfeasance by those in power.

- Wikileaks leaks PUBLIC information (not PRIVATE). Credit card numbers are not public info, voters don't need this info to decide how to vote. What the government does, on the other hand, is something we need to know. Remember Wikileaks censored the names of US informants in the war diaries.

- About the cables - Wikileaks actually did not leak them to the public. They gave them to 5 major newspapers around the world who discussed them together and decided what to leak and what

Well unless that person from Bank of America had permission to give away the drive then they stole it and Assange revived stolen property. When you knowingly or in many places negligently (ie you should have suspected enough to check things out) receive stolen property its a crime.

Assange has effectively confessed to a crime here if Bank of America can show a drive missing from the inventory or some IT guy improperly disposing of one.

When you close your account, be sure to note that it is because you have reasonable belief that Bank of America may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with your internal policies for a bank-customer relationship.

These are great because a senior BofA executive testified under oath that BofA routinely never trasnferred mortgage notes to the mortgage trusts when they were sold as "Mortgage Backed Securities" i.e. they were really "Nothing Backed Securities"

Now, the funny part is that BofA is Disavowing the testimony of its own executive.

Move to a local Credit Union. Cheaper fees and much better service along with responsiveness. I did and Yes I have Direct Deposit, Online Banking with Bill Pay, far better interest on my savings and checking plus a much better rate on my credit card. Another advantage is that a credit union can not pull this kind of shit as the members cand and should review the leadership on a regular basis, then decide if they need replacement.

If the government can declare something "illegal" and pressure private companies to not do business with a particular entity... does it really matter if they can "make no law" abridging freedom of speech? Isn't the first amendment completely worthless?

It's not just cruft from yesteryear that lowers respect for law; there are plenty of modern laws that engender that response. Drug laws, for example, are widely disobeyed (see the massive prison population, the largest on Earth, IIRC), as are the drinking age, speed limits, laws against jaywalking, etc. With our luck under your system, Congress would pass these laws and scrap things like Posse Comitatus.

I don't get it. If congress can't set a federal drinking age how can they outlaw drugs? If the feds needed a constitutional amendment to prohibit alcohol how come one wasn't needed for the war on drugs?

You silly guy. The Supreme Court figured out that all these years we really didn't need an amendment to prohibit alcohol sales. Congress had the right to do that under the commerce clause all along! In fact, Congress has the right to do just about anything they want under the commerce clause.

In fact, if it wasn't for the 18th (and later, 21st Amendments) Congress would have probably set the drinking age at 21 based on commerce clause powers a long time ago. Unfortunately for them the 21st spells out that this right is reserved to the states -- but only for alcohol. A congressional ban on tobacco would be fully in line with current jurisprudence.

You know moe, after your little insulting reply to my divest Israel comment, I was thinking of lighting you up (or down as the case may be) with my mod points.

But I actually agree with most of your other comments. In a quick reading, I can't decide whether or not you are liberal or libertarian, but on the off-chance you are liberal or left-leaning, I'd like to point out that the only dissenters in Raich v. Gonzales were from conservative members of the court (specifically, Thomas & Rehnquist, with the

I don't get it. If congress can't set a federal drinking age how can they outlaw drugs? If the feds needed a constitutional amendment to prohibit alcohol how come one wasn't needed for the war on drugs?

Little known fact: The constitution was repealed by FDR shortly after Pearl Harbor.

Do you have anything at all to back up this "fact" other than that you want it to be true?

August/2010 A warrant for Assange is issued by the Swedish Prosecution Authority.

August/2010 The law firm of Borgstrom and Bodstrom quickly volunteer to represent the two accusers, Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilen.

Thomas Bodstrom, former Justice Minister, has an interesting background: he came under investigation four times by Sweden's constitutional committee while Justice Minister after arresting members of the Pirate Bay file-sharing operation. He was also instrumental in pushi

How is discussing already leaked documents a suicide pact? Sure, those who leak the documents can be prosecuted and have all sort of torture or even be executed.

The role of being able to discuss, quote, or organize "leaked documents" is that it is impossible to distinguish between secrets which are being held because they are politically damaging and those secrets which are intended to protect the lives or liberty of those mentioned in the memos. The issue really is one of what to do once the information h

Bernie Madoff and his scheme had nothing to do with Bank of America.Also Bank of America had very little to do with MBS, and only got bigger because by buying up those collapsed companies.

Bank of America purchased Countrywide Mortgages, which were right in the thick of the whole mortgage-backed security mess and practically started the system in the first place. When they purchased that company, they took on all of the liabilities including the responsibility to clean up the mess that the company made in the first place. In this sense, Bank of America is Countrywide Mortgages, one of the most notorious lenders of underwater property in America. Their hands are certainly not clean with this mess.

As for Bernie Madoff, I don't think Bank of America was necessarily active in terms of any of its officers directly involved with setting up the ponzi scheme, but to say that Bank of America was completely uninvolved is sort of a lie as well. I don't know the full extent of how they were involved, if any, but I'm sure at least some money that Madoff used went through one or more Bank of America accounts. They are too big of a bank not to be completely uninvolved with the kind of money and the number of clients involved. It was a bit unfair, however, to even invoke Madoff as the MBS mess and loans to illegal immigrants (at the insistence of many within the Democratic Party leadership in Congresss) and other "disadvantaged minorities" with little by way of credit worthiness or ability to pay off the loans routinely did happen with this bank, and that is sufficient to show how corrupt the system got. Madoff is a side show, not the main event, and may even be shown in the long run as a hero as he was at least up front in the end that he was running a ponzi scheme. These banks are doing much worse and getting away with it too.

Though this isn't the best fit, I came across a quote by Thoreau in a short story called "Repent Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman that seems like a good fit for the whole thing in general so I thought I'd share.

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly,but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army,and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc.In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of thejudgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselveson a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden mencan perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well.Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.Others--as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers,and office-holders--serve the state chiefly with their heads;and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are aslikely to serve the devil, without _intending_ it, as God.A very few--as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in thegreat sense, and _men_--serve the state with their consciencesalso, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; andthey are commonly treated as enemies by it.

If Federal regulators even SUSPECT you have been allowing terrorists to receive payment, you are subject to an audit with a cost of about 50 million dollars to support (you have to pay all of your people to deal with the audit instead of their normal job responsibilities). The fines and reprecussions are on top of that initial cost, and can include being barred from the FDIC, which basically shuts down a bank forever.

My guess is that bank of america merely has the inside scoup and wikileaks is about to be declared official terrorists.

If Federal regulators even SUSPECT you have been allowing terrorists to receive payment

Sorry to spoil it for you but that would include every single American tax payer.

I know I will eventually get moderated down to the middle of the world for saying so. But I put no label on the tax payers as such or claim that the American government would be anything special in this regard. Just stating the facts. Or isn't it terrorism just because the government are in charge?

What else than terrorism can you call the first helicopter attack video Wikileaks leaked?

Though I have no idea who the photographers where, or if the people in the helicopter know them, or why they shoot in the first place.

Oxford American dictionaries:"terrorism |?ter??riz?m| noun the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims."

Are you seriously defending the "cannot see the difference between a rocket launcher and a camera zoom lens yet qualified for duty" asshats? Is it not terrorism if you have expensive equipment? If Russia sold a few MiGs to Hamas would US nod approvingly and take them off the terrorist list since they now were a properly expensive army?

They deal with scum like Bernie maddoff and involved with some of the shadiest operations imaginable and they turn off the hose to THIS? banksters are the cancers of our society. When the revolution comes, there won't be enough brick layers to keep up with the wall building demand.

The government had power to set meaningful regulations when the public supported the general principle. For example, meat handling regulations were brought in just over a hundred years ago, which are responsible for the nice safe shrink-wrapped meat we have today. (The meat industry is in a war on those regulations, and the quality of meat has been going down over the past 10 years.)

This was considered such a good thing, that the zeitgeist held that the best products were inspected by experts and held up to official standards. Businessmen were, by their nature, crooks, and would try to pull the wool over the eyes of their consumers. So regulations were like Hobbs Leviathan for business, just as the police are the Leviathan for citizens.

Switch to the modern world, and business interests are heavily invested in sophisticated spin campaigns, to ensure an endless party -- sometimes at our expense. Thanks to neo-liberalism and the Fox effect, anything remotely centrist is painted as some type of extremism. The AGW denial campaign uses exactly the same tactic: take an extreme position, and then non-experts will think that the truth lies in-between. The result is a shift in the zeitgeist, as the door starts to swing more and more in your direction.

Some might think that this type of extremism will be seen through. Think again. Nazi Germany, USSR, North Korea, Post-revolutionary France, they all show just how dark society can become under the grip of extremism. Germany is and was a fine country, and sunk very quickly thanks to media spin that blew on the embers of chauvinism and authoritarianism. And that is exactly what Fox and the tea-party stands for.

"We will no longer process payments to them because they are not consistent with our policy for who we process payments to."

This tautology neatly covers the fact that Wikileaks has been charged with precisely zero crimes over Cablegate. These upstanding organizations all like to pretend that they are following the law, but they are actually taking the law into their own hands. I hope they get the shit sued out of them.

"We will no longer process payments to them because they are not consistent with our policy for who we process payments to."

This tautology neatly covers the fact that Wikileaks has been charged with precisely zero crimes over Cablegate.

Yet they have specifically threatened BoA with the leakage of sensitive information belonging to BoA. If somebody told you they were going to air your dirty laundry, would you still do business with them?

BoA is not a public utility. When I ran a business I declined to deal with certain people because they were a huge pain in the ass. Can't BoA do the same????

WikiLeaks is not a problem client for BoA, because BoA does not and likely has not ever dealt with WikiLeaks directly. They're denying transactions to third-party organizations that deal with WikiLeaks directly.

Just about the only way this could be a reasonable decision is if WikiLeaks were officially declared a terrorist organization. As it stands now, with Assange claiming that WikiLeaks has a BoA hard drive and has dirt on an major U.S. bank, this seems to be "personal".

We assume that banks transact their client's funds with an implicit neutrality, or else
anyone in possession of a check couldn't trust that it was a valid
monetary substitute. BoA isn't indicating "illegal" behavior, only that
the recipient is acting in a manner inconsistent with BoA policies.

Between the Government stampede to eliminate the 1st amendment, and the use of
corporations to act where the rule-of-law isn't convenient, the US Government and Corporate overlords are playing with fire.

All democracy-loving non-US entities should be watching carefully as this plays out.

not worth getting big guns out just for that. that was simply a practice run.

this drama won't end for years, in all probability.

and keeping it all alive is *exactly* what the big liars don't want.

btw, if I was a bofa customer, I'd pull all my funds out of their bank. if my bank pulls this shit, I'll definitely yank my account and transfer it all elsewhere. it will be a hassle but I'm fully willing to do it. (hint, its over 6 figures, too. that HURTS banks, if enough of us do that).

Which I think is a strategic move on his part. Once Sweden extradites him, in all likelihood, he can't be extradited *from* Sweden by another country (say, US). Note that he got bail in the UK despite basically being a nomad, and all he has to do is spend four hours during daylight hours and four hours during night hours at a friend's mansion. I suspect (and it is just a guess) that the reason is that he agreed not to fight extradition to Sweden. Note also that the criminal charges he faces in Sweden do not carry any mandatory jail time.

Assange also claimed he had a "poison pill" file he'd release if he were arrested.

No he didn't. I challenge you to find a single quote from him saying anything even remotely like that.All the "poison pill" stuff has been speculation by commentators and pundits regarding the insurance.aes256 file - but Assange hasn't said one word about what that file is or what anyone might do with it.

Wikileaks' official position seems to be that the file is not blackmail material, but a failsafe measure to get the data public if their operations are disrupted too much to continue their gradual, controlled release. Also that the file simply contains all the material they are going to release anyway, eventually.

The actions of Americans to hide what they have truthfully and secretly said to their kin disgusts me.
The whole insular and antagonistic country needs to go and d.i.a.f. and leave the rest of the world to live their lives in peace.
Americans espouse freedom of speech... until it gives them a red face, then they show their true colours. A country of warmongers.

Have you ever been to America? They're some of the politest and most welcoming people you'll ever meet. The dichotomy between the decency of the people there, and the corruption of the government is inexplicable. Until you turn on a TV in the USA and see what passes for news in that country. You want someone to blame? Blame the oligarchy that owns America's media.

I have been enough to America, to know that msot of the folk is highly prejudicied for a reason or another. I am always polite, and try to speak the local language as good as possible. But once people remark my french accent, it is game over. I get cold shoulder and so on. And pelase don't tell me that's because I am french : 1) I have colleague from other nationality which also got cold shoulder (Iran, Indian, Swiss, german, Spanish nationalities) 2) For TRULY polite people it would not matter which color or nationaly one is, by default people should be polite with people they don't know anything beyond the nationality.

Sure it is only a bunch of anecdotial story, and so no real evidence, but really I call bullshit on what you said. The US is not a country of polite people. Provide us evidence of it and maybe we'll all think our anecdotial evidence is only a sign we got bad luck. until then, all i have to answer you is : get real.

And when you meet American tourists in France do you greet them warmly, or do you pointedly ignore them because they are just ignorant Americans? You should probably examine how Americans are treated in your country before you judge them on how they treat you in theirs.

And when you meet American tourists in France do you greet them warmly, or do you pointedly ignore them because they are just ignorant Americans? You should probably examine how Americans are treated in your country before you judge them on how they treat you in theirs.

Should we judge these American "tourists" before or after they start dropping bombs on civilians? Or did you not notice this whole discussion started about just how unlike their government the American people are. The fact that the French,

Have you ever been to America? They're some of the politest and most welcoming people you'll ever meet. The dichotomy between the decency of the people there, and the corruption of the government is inexplicable.

It's not just us. Visit Italy or Kampuchea or Nigeria, among others. The average guy practically anywhere is usually pretty decent, even if his government is unbelievably corrupt. Democracy can reduce the level of official corruption, but it's not a silver bullet, e.g., Italy or Louisiana.

FWIW, America's problem is its hypertrophied nationalism. People here identify so strongly with their idealized image of their country that when someone points out flaws or misdeeds by the government, they interpret it as a personal attack.

FWIW, America's problem is its hypertrophied nationalism. People here identify so strongly with their idealized image of their country that when someone points out flaws or misdeeds by the government, they interpret it as a personal attack.

That explains why even the libertarains that are forever going on about how they need big guns to overthrow the government go crazy at even the mildest criticism of that government by outsiders. They call for death for leakers but a bed of flowers for those that sold US

It sure doesn't help. Neither does the overall level of apathy and lack of awareness of current events beyond the heavily filtered TV news sources.

The real killer, IMHO, is that we're so physically isolated by the oceans that relatively few Americans visit other developed countries to see how other people live. When I first spent a few months in western Europe, I felt like those Soviet soldiers in WW2 that Stalin subsequently purged because they had seen how well people lived in the West, contrary to Soviet propaganda.

I have been loving these articles, as it routes out the companies that obviously aren't aligned with supporting liberty, and I hate to use companies which don't espouse, or support in some way, the values I believe in. So all of these articles, and businesses, have saved me a lot of time. More so, I love the ones where some companies steps up to fill the void. Those are the companies I'll migrate my business, and my businesses business to.

I think Assange is a twat. I believe a lot of what he is doing is irresponsible, and designed to feed his ego. That said, I fully support his right to be an ass. I would start boycotting all of these companies bringing pressure on Wikileaks, but I left them all years ago.:)

On Amazon, I am mixed. They could have fought harder, but the Wikileaks issue was effecting other customers... Tough call.